Ukraine Lost the Strategically Important Klishchiivka

The area is still contested, but it will be a lot better if Ukraine can take this town back.

First, the Ukrainians had control of it. Then, the Russians took it before they captured Bakhmut city. Instead of pursuing Bakhmut, the Ukrainians targeted the outskirts of the city and in the proceess, they regained control of it. However, the Russians took it back again.

If we were to create a list of towns that frequently changed hands between the two sides, Klishchiivka would likely top the list. I don’t think the back-and-forth is over yet; this struggle is likely to continue for some time.

It’s still not a done deal, as Ukrainian forces continue to surround the village from two directions. However, they have been pushed out of the village and are not fully in control of the dominant heights offered by Klishchiivka.

The importance of Klishchiivka lies in its elevation. From this vantage point, one can fire into a vast cross-section of the map. In this sector, having control of this small town is far more advantageous than not having it.

Sometime in the last week of May, the Russians pushed the Ukrainian troops away from the town. On May 22, 2024, the Russians breached the Ukrainian defense of the town.

The Russian army took control of the Ukrainian settlement of Klishchiivka, an important strategic height, allowing Moscow to control transport routes, the Defense Ministry claimed on Wednesday.

“As a result of active actions, units of the Southern Group of Troops liberated the settlement of Klishchiivka in the Donetsk People’s Republic,” the ministry said in a statement.

It is true.

If Ukraine controls this town, they can disrupt Russian transport routes and target Russian defenders across a wide area.

However, the Russians are still not feeling very comfortable, as Ukraine continues to cover the town from three directions. This situation is obviously a setback for Ukraine. The sheer amount of time both sides have spent trying to control this town underscores its importance. Ukraine needs to strike back and regain control.

Ideally, Ukraine should send in reinforcements to retake it. However, given the number of fronts where the Russians are attacking and the heavy losses the Russians are incurring, it’s unclear whether Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrski will prioritize this location. Personally, I think it should be a top priority, but I don’t know what Syrski will decide.

Let’s see. It’s a difficult choice to make.

Despite the staggering losses the Russians have accumulated in the last two months, they refuse to slow down. They are intent on throwing as many resources as possible into the conflict, with little regard for the impact on Russian democragphics and its workforce. They have surpassed the monthly casualty figures of 30,000 and are fast approaching 50,000.

How long will they be able to sustain this monstrous rate of losses?

The Russian Ministry of Defense is bending over backwards to keep recruiting. Since very little training is being offered to the majority of Russian troops, their main concern is not the training schedule but the daily recruitment numbers.

It has been reported that the Russian armed forces have finally started picking up men from urban centers, something the Kremlin avoided for a long time. However, they are still carefully avoiding conscripting the middle class and upper-middle class residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg due to fear of backlash.

Let’s see how long Russia will keep its hands off the elites in Moscow and St. Petersberg. They are going to get there very soon.

They are also recruiting heavily from Africa. Some of the women recruited from Africa are working in Russia’s drone factory in Alabuga.

Early last year, as per WSJ’s report, Russian businessmen from the Alabuga Special Economic Zone held a recruitment event at an upscale school in Kampala, Uganda. They offered young female students skilled jobs with triple the average Ugandan wage, free airfare, accommodation, and a university diploma as part of a work-study program.

Some recruiters, including Ugandan schoolteachers and administrators, quietly contact former students with the right skills. Joseph Kazibwe, a recruiter and deputy headmaster at a secondary school in Lubiri, said that the Russians are interested in young women who excel in science subjects. Kazibwe mentioned he was unaware the jobs involved building drones.

“Our job is to identify and reach out to suitable candidates,” he said.

According to Kazibwe, the Russians take full charge of the process after the initial identification of suitable candidates and do not share their recruitment criteria, leaving the local recruiters without knowledge of how and who they eventually select.

The Kremlin understands that the pace of destruction suffered by the Russian armed forces is not sustainable in the long run. As a result, they are doing whatever they can to compensate for the rate at which they are losing troops in Ukraine, including throwing more and more money at the problem.

Record spending by the Kremlin is not slowing down. It is acclerating.

“The reasons for rising incomes in Russia have been well documented: a labor shortage, hefty payments to soldiers and their families, and an unprecedented level of state spending that has obliged defense sector factories to work around the clock. However, whether standards of living have actually improved is open to debate, given the record military spending, high inflation, Western sanctions, and limits on hydrocarbon exports,” The Moscow Times reported a few hours ago.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West that it was playing with fire after granting permission to hit the invaders in Belgorod Oblast, a Russian district bordering Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast. However, it is Putin who is playing with his economy and his nation’s demographics.

Putin still has a decent cash cushion, with an estimated $55 billion remaining in the National Wealth Fund as of February 2024. It is not a lot, but savings are still savings. So, Putin is pushing hard to see how far he can get.

I wrote about this before and I want to note it down here again: the closer he gets to depleting the NWF, the more desperate his actions will become.

That is what we are witnessing on the battlefield today. This is not Russia winning; this is Russia throwing everything in, hoping to win some thing and reach for a ceasefire before they run out of money.

What can Ukraine do under these circumstances?

They need to keep doing what they are doing now. They have stalled the Russians in the northeast but have lost some territory in the Donetsk region over the last two months.

Klishchiivka must be taken back. How and when, I have no idea. They need to keep the area contested and not allow the Russians to fully establish control over the section. Regarding the other territories they have lost in the last two months, there is no need to hurry. Some losses are expected and acceptable.

Their focus must be on reducing Russian combat power, which is happening naturally.

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